Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) isn’t buying repeated assurances from President Bush and Pentagon officials that the United Arab Emirates is a key ally of the United States, and therefore the deal giving a UAE-owned company control of six U.S. ports poses no threat.

Numerous lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are fuming over the administration’s approval of a $6.8 billion deal to allow Dubai Ports World to take over significant operations at six U.S. ports without a thorough investigation and without consulting Congress. Administration officials from the Pentagon to the Department of Homeland Security have insisted on numerous occasions that the deal did not pose any national security threats.

But Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, during a hearing on Thursday insisted otherwise, calling the United Arab Emirates “accommodators.”

“They accommodate people who come with lots of money,” Hunter said, adding that UAE has not been a consistent supporter of the United States. According to Hunter, Dubai, one of the emirates, played a key role as a transfer point in the trade of nuclear weapons.

In 2003, over U.S. protests, Hunter said UAE customs officials allowed 66 American high-speed electrical switches, which are ideal for detonating nuclear weapons, to be sent to a Pakistani businessman with longstanding ties to the Pakistani military.

In another incident, he said 70 tons of heavy water, a component for nuclear reactors, was sent from China to Dubai. The shipping labels were then changed to mask the transaction, and 60 tons of the heavy water was forwarded to India, where it enabled the government to use its energy-producing reactors to create plutonium for its atomic weapons program, Hunter charged. Two containers of gas centrifuge parts from the Pakistani head of a weapons-of-mass-destruction ring, A. Q. Khan’s, were shipped through Dubai to Iran for about $3 million worth of UAE. currency, Hunter added.

“They [the U.A.E] is not interested in who it is, as long as they get to be the bazaar,” Hunter said. “They are an international player who can’t be ignored because of their size, money and strategic location. [But] those are people you do not want close to the security apparatus.”

During the same hearing, Edward Bilkey, the CEO of Dubai Ports World, attempted to make an impassioned appeal to lawmakers about his U.S. roots.

Bilkey grew up in New Jersey and boasts ties to former Sen. Joseph Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), who was the chairman of the committee on coast defenses and was a cousin of Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.).

“In every generation from the founding of the United States to today, members of my family have served in the Senate, House of Representatives or as Secretary of State," Bilkey said in prepared remarks.

A former officer in the U.S. Navy, Bilkey said he personally “set in motion” the arrangements for the first aircraft carrier to enter the port of Jebel Ali in Dubai “solving a major logistics problem for the Navy” during the first Gulf War.

He also said that DP World’s senior management is from the United States, Britain, India, Netherlands and Dubai.

“Our board chairman, a citizen of Dubai, went to Temple University. Our Chief Executive Officer also a citizen of Dubai, is a graduate of the University of Arizona," Bilkey said.